The Leading Edge - The Mind of a School Shooter

Empathyis the greatest deterrent to violence and even anger, because literallyand figuratively, you can’t walk in someone else’s shoes and step ontheir toes at the same time. Glibness aside, the reason for that isbecause empathy is a sensory experience where you are feeling whatanother person is feeling (what jargon wielding psychoanalysts call"vicarious introspection") while anger is a motor function where youfeel and get angry at another person as a reaction to a real orperceived hurt or injury by them.

There are two forces thatdecrease or completely sever the capacity for empathy. This includes onthe one hand being so criticized, ignored, betrayed or in other waysassaulted by the outside world that your ability to keep perspectiveand override your animal reflex to get even is lost. On the other hand,this can occur when your psyche so loses touch with reality (as we arediscovering with the shooters at Virginia Tech and now NorthernIllinois University) that you perceive the world to be against you whenit may not be.

What are the solutions? Research has consistentlyshown that one of the greatest correlations to adult mental health,well being and even success is having family dinners together two tothree times/week. It’s not exactly clear why that is so, but one couldpostulate that when such dinners take place where presumably there areconversations that demonstrate caring and interest more than criticism,this may have both an assuaging and ameliorating effect on childrenbeing able to get stuff off their chest, talk their concerns out, belistened to and feel cared about.

When children grow up bathedin the empathy and caring of a family that loves them, the capacity forempathy endures through teens and adulthood that enables them to endurethe slings and arrows of everyday life without blowing a fuse andexploding back at the world in violence.

On a grander scale,empathy is becoming in shorter supply as we shift away fromrelationships which are about relating in order to connect and becomecloser to transactionships which are about negotiating in order to winand get your way.